World of change in winemaking

Chicagoans are thirsty. Whether it's an $8 glass of 2006 Brooks Riesling from Oregon raised in a toast at Webster's Wine Bar in Lincoln Park, a $15 bottle of French rosï¿½ named the "Pink Criquet" and tossed back on an Oak Park porch, or a $2,125 bottle of Gaja's 1978 Italian Barbaresco, sipped respectfully at one of Charlie Trotter's prime tables, folks are reaching for wine.

More than a common love for fermented grape juice ties these wine drinkers together, yet few recognize it.

It's the 45th parallel, an imaginary line encircling the world halfway between the North Pole and the Equator.

The 45th parallel is more than an exercise in geography. It symbolizes and connects the increasing globalization of flavors, changing climate concerns and the eternal search for good wines at bargain prices.

In the world of wine, the 45th parallel is the global equivalent of the Magnificent Mile in terms of quality and cachet. It threads its way through the Bordeaux and Cotes du Rhone regions of France, Italy's Piedmont, the Willamette Valley of Oregon.

For Steven Alexander, sommelier at Chicago's Spiaggia restaurant, the 45th parallel is a global pathway the savvy wine buyer can exploit. For consumers, he said, they will be able to "look east" along the parallel and find regions producing wines of comparable quality but charging a lot less. Think of such regions as Russia's Black Sea coast, the Balkan country of Croatia, China's isolated Xinjiang province and even the Leelanau peninsula in Michigan.

"[Wine drinkers] can look along that line as quality wines become more expensive from France and Italy," he added. "If you're looking for a bottle in the $12 range, there's plenty of choices along that line."

Wine matters hereWhat happens to wine made on the line and elsewhere matters increasingly to Chicago, the nation's third-largest wine market, and elsewhere across the United States, because Americans are drinking more wine than ever before. The American wine market has been growing for 14 consecutive years, according to the Wine Institute, a San Francisco-based California wine trade group. And though the economy has been tanking of late, the institute reports wine sales in the U.S. were up 4 percent from 2006 to 2007 to $30 billion. Wine even nudged beer out as the country's favorite beverage in 2005. (Don't worry, Old Style lovers, suds bounced back the next year.)

Why all the fuss about wine? Wine isn't just a drink. It has served as a sacrament, a muse and, especially in the days when water was often undrinkable, a reliable thirst-quencher that could be stored for a while.

Even today, wine holds an exalted position. Jeffrey M. Davies, a Bordeaux-based wine dealer, said people invest in wine as a measure of how they see themselves, either now or in a more successful future. "Tell me what you drink, and I'll tell you who you are," he said, paraphrasing Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, the famed French gastronome.

Wine also holds the promise of a certain kind of lifestyle. Take a quick dash through the dueling South Loop stores run by Sam's Wines & Spirits and Binny's Beverage Depot and it's immediately obvious they're selling more than wine, beer and spirits. You can stock up on gourmet cheeses, fine cigars and fancy wine gadgetry—all the comforts of an upscale life.

New competitorsFor centuries, Bordeaux epitomized the glamour of the wine life along the 45th parallel. No more. There's too much competition. In this new world, Russian tycoons pour money into Black Sea wineries, Croatia hustles to get its wine groove back after years of war and communism and Oregon's Willamette Valley gains worldwide attention for its Burgundian-like pinot noir. Like the preachers riding the circuit of old, expert winemakers travel from continent to continent, winery to winery, working to build wines that can win reputation-making scores from influential critics and magazines. Their stylistic impact goes beyond pricey collector bottlings to affect even the affordable wines so many of us buy in supermarkets every day.

What makes the 45th parallel so special? In the Northern Hemisphere, wine grapes grow best within a defined geographical band stretching from about 30 to 50 degrees north latitude. That's roughly from southern Canada to Southern California. Sounds like a lot of room, but not every locale will work with every grape variety, especially if you want to make quality wine people will buy.

It's a Goldilocks scenario: Go too far north or too high in elevation and it's often too cold for the grapes to ripen successfully and predictably. Too far south or too close to sea level and it's often too hot; grapes can ripen so quickly that quality suffers. But there are locales between 30 and 50 degrees latitude, notably along the 45th parallel, that tend to be just right for various wine grape varieties; you just need to know which works best where.

"I love the idea of the 45th parallel," said Clara Orban, a languages professor at DePaul University, who teaches a popular geography course called The World of Wine. "Really, right in the middle of this larger band you can have the ideal balance between temperature, humidity and soil."

Where magic beginsDoug Jeffirs, director of wine sales for Binny's Beverage Depot, said the 45th parallel is just the starting point for good wine.

"To me, where the real magic comes into play is when this and all the other elements meet to create that special synergy needed to produce a magical wine," he said. "Other critical factors are varietal and clone selection, terroir and, maybe most important, the winemaker's expertise."

Jeffirs said the line has little impact on consumers until someone tries to sell a bottle from an up-and-coming region like Oregon or Michigan. Then making that link from one place to another is important."In wine, there's a lot of name recognition," said Brian J. Sommers, author of "The Geography of Wine: How Landscapes, Cultures, Terroir and the Weather Make a Good Drop."

"If people don't know your product, it's good marketing to say, 'We may not be Bordeaux, but we're Bordeaux in the quality of our location and what we can achieve,' " added Sommers, a geography professor at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain, Conn.

And Michigan winemakers do play up their parallel connection with both Bordeaux and Burgundy. The 2008 issue of Michigan Wine Country, sponsored by the Michigan Grape and Wine Industry Council, features a map that shows various lines of latitude running across both the United States and western Europe. The headline? "Latitude + Climate = Classic Grapes."

Some French winemakers in Bordeaux aren't convinced that the 45th parallel is a key to success. They believe that every region, every subregion, even various parcels in their own vineyards, are unique and aren't particularly tied to others—especially a continent away.

"The common point is that they are on that parallel," said Thomas Duroux, chief executive officer of Chateau Palmer, a well-known third-growth winery in Bordeaux's Margaux region.

"Maybe there's something to it, but I don't know," he added. "There's an incredible difference in wines from region to region and there's good wine and bad wine."

For Luca Currado, winemaker at the Vietti winery in Castiglione Falletto, a village in the Barolo wine region in Italy, just a few degrees south of the 45th parallel, there is something to the broad band of territory on either side of the line. He's just as apt to compare his region's nebbiolo wines to the pinot noirs of Oregon as to Burgundy.

"The style of the 45th parallel is complexity and elegance," he said. "There are more intelligent wines on the 45th parallel. It's wine more for the brain than the palate."

The question now is how long can the 45th parallel remain the wine line? Climate change triggered by global warming is threatening to transform the world's wine landscape on a massive scale. Many researchers think cooler areas will heat up and warmer areas will turn hot and dry. Gregory Jones, a climate geographer at Southern Oregon University in Ashland, Ore., noted in his 2007 report, "Climate Change and the Global Wine Industry," that the wine industry will have to adapt to changing styles, new varieties, scarcer water supplies and more.

In Barbaresco, Italy, Gaia Gaja is certainly aware of global warming at the world-famous Gaja Family Wine Estates. The winery's vice president, she notes that the weather is growing hotter and drier in the Piedmont region. Just as her father, Angelo, tested different clones of the nebbiolo grape in the 1970s to find the best plants for the wetter, cool climate conditions of that time (nebbiolo comes from the Italian word for "fog"), so must the winery now look for "new clones that are better than what's out there," she said.

Nature will solve crisis"In 20 years, I'm sure nature will give us a clone that will survive in a drier climate," Gaja said.

Others aren't so sure of the impact or the need to act.

"I think people are talking too much about climate," said Paolo Bava, winemaker at his family's winery based in Cocconato, a village outside the Piedmontese town of Asti. "Over the last 100 years we've had moments of warmth and moments of cold."

Some winemakers in Bordeaux, like their counterparts in California's Napa Valley, shrug their shoulders when asked about the impact of global warming. Some studies claim that these areas may actually grow cooler as climatic patterns shift, they note.

"There are so many potential scenarios that, if I was on the front lines, I'd be shrugging my shoulders too," Sommers said.

The next few generations of wine drinkers may have some interesting choices.

"Canadian zinfandel? Russian syrah?" Jeffirs asked. "I don't think we'll have to worry about it in our lifetime, but 50-plus years from now, we'll probably have regions currently too cold for vinifera vines being able to handle them and the warmer regions dealing with heat too excessive for optimal ripening."

Bill Daley is the Tribune's food and wine critic. He writes the weekly Uncorked column in Good Eating. He reported this story from France and Italy, with contributions from Tribune foreign correspondents writing on Croatia, Russia and China.

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